UN holds emergency meeting on African Ebola outbreak

United Nations officials chaired an emergency meeting on Friday and allocated an additional $30.5 million to combat the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s record-breaking Ebola crisis. UN Humanitarian Chief Tom Fletcher released a statement after the meeting, calling the ongoing crisis as the fastest-growing outbreak on record and said it at some point could become the deadliest. The World Health Organization identified nearly 4,500 confirmed Ebola cases in the months-long outbreak, with nearly 2,100 deaths, according to a Wednesday update from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

UN leaders planned to turbocharge the collective humanitarian response against the virus with the extra funding, bringing the UN’s total emergency Ebola response funding to $54.5 million, Fletcher said. The number of teams overseeing safe burials needed to double, treatment capacity needed to triple, and contact tracing needed to improve, he added. The world needed to wake up and show support because over 2,000 people died with many more at risk, Fletcher said.